Drawing from Life and from Imagination

HATFIELD: Do you try to keep up a constant practice in figure drawing?

THOMPSON: Yeah. It's the most instantly gratifying element of drawing. I mean, these figure drawings [pointing to a sketchbook] are more about the process, probably, than the final drawing, and they're as much about the relationship I have with the people I'm drawing as the process. With each one, I'm remembering them over again.

I just have a blank sheet of paper and I tackle it right away with a brush, versus a comics page, which has to be composed and broken down and has to fit in specific information. [Making a page] is not just drawing what's in front of me, and it's not done instinctually. But I have sketchbook after sketchbook of these [figure] drawings that nobody has seen, so it's a large part of my artistic life that is unpublished.

HATFIELD: You particularly enjoy drawing women.

THOMPSON: Yeah. [Laughs.]

HATFIELD: I can imagine worse exercises. [Laughter.]

THOMPSON: Well, you know what they say -- God created Adam first, but wasn't happy until after creating Eve. Everyone worships the female form, because it's the perfection of God's creation.

HATFIELD: If you were away from figure drawing for awhile, would you miss it?

THOMPSON: Yeah. I was away for awhile. For instance, here are drawings of my friend Miriam. I was traveling for seven months. When I came back, the first drawings are very tentative and clunky. It's like being with a friend after spending time apart, where you're still trying to...

HATFIELD: ...clear your throat.

THOMPSON: ...clear your throat and become comfortable around each other again.

HATFIELD: You've never taken formal, academic anatomical training?

THOMPSON: No.

HATFIELD: How long have you been drawing these closely observed pictures of friends?

THOMPSON: I didn't start too actively until I was thinking about Blankets. I had this vision of what Blankets would look like, and I had to learn to make the transition from drawing in a goofy, cartoony style to drawing humans. I did go get my anatomy books from the library and start studying anatomy. That really was awkward for me, but it did seem to help. Certainly, something like How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, that cylinder-sphere method, didn't help at all, so I just started drawing friends.

HATFIELD: Prior to that, did you have a practice of drawing from life? Did you go to parks, or street corners, and draw?

THOMPSON: I drew primarily from my imagination. I had the same art teacher from first grade through 12th grade, because I grew up in a small town, so he taught at both the elementary school and the high school, and he always wanted me to experiment in different media. He was always trying to push painting and pottery, fabrics and weaving, whatever. I was always sort of resistant: I just wanted to draw, and at that time it was mainly in pencil, and it was mainly from my imagination.

HATFIELD: Can you remember when you began drawing? Or is it below the threshold of memory?

THOMPSON: Well, my parents always talk about when I was four, [and] my church missionary was over at my parents' house. His name was Craig Preston. He spent a lot of time in Indonesia. Apparently I was coloring in a coloring book, and he pointed out to me - this is a very telling story, now that I think about it -- pointed out to me that the whole point was to color within the lines. I was four years old, and the lesson clicked instantly, and I finished the rest of the coloring book very meticulously, coloring in the lines. And they were kind of dazzled: "Wow. He has this control." At the same time, it's pretty funny, this Christian missionary penned me in from a more creative expression.

HATFIELD: As if you were attacking the faith with crayons, by not staying within the lines?

THOMPSON: He showed me that you could control that. That's important, I guess -- a lesson. I certainly started drawing around that time, too -- so, around age four. I was so influenced by Charles Schulz, that most of my characters, for the longest time, were round-headed and bald, until I got to first grade. In first grade, my crafts and art teacher pointed it out to me: "You should draw hair on people, you know? Look at people's hair styles." I drew a lot as a child, and there are times when I think that I haven't really progressed much since the age of nine or ten. All my drawing's on about the same level as it was then.

HATFIELD: You said yesterday you were interested in technical matters. You had some drive to better or perfect yourself in a technical sense, even from an early age.

THOMPSON: Yeah, but I was also very much self-educated and low-brow. This is important, too, for a lot of cartoonists. I wasn't coming from an artistic family. I didn't have access to fine art. So, I was trying to learn a lot about what I was working on, but I was still in a very mass-art realm of comics and cartoons.

[To read the full version of this interview, please see The Comics Journal #268.]

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